With all the ballots counted Levine increases lead and cements Assembly victory

It's final — with all the votes now counted in Marin and Sonoma counties San Rafael Councilman Marc Levine pulled off a surprising upset victory over Assemblyman Michael Allen to secure the new 10th Assembly District seat.

Election officials in Marin and Sonoma counties finished counting all of the ballots from the Nov. 6 election on Friday and released unofficial final results, although those results have not yet been certified.

Allen trailed by just 1,663 votes the day after the election; but after all of the remaining absentee and provisional ballots had been counted Friday, Levine had actually increased his margin of victory to 4,448 votes. Levine finished with 96,421 votes or about 51 percent of the vote while Allen ended up with 91,973 votes or nearly of 49 percent of the vote.

Levine even garnered 163 more votes than Allen in Sonoma County, which constitutes part of the district that Allen now represents.

"Its gratifying to have had the response throughout the North Bay. To have won the entire district is fantastic," Levine said. "We always spoke to the issues of the North Bay and gave that respect to the voters, and in the end the wisdom of the voters prevailed in a race where everyone thought I was the underdog."

The results remove any doubt that Levine will succeed Jared Huffman as Marin's representative in the Assembly. Huffman, a Democrat who was forced by term limits to step aside, ran for Congress and won in the Nov. 6 vote.

The final vote count also did not change the final results in two lower-profile Marin races.

In the Sausalito City Council election, Vicki Nichols ended up falling 16 votes short of third-place finisher Thomas Theodores in a race where seven candidates were competing for three seats.

Theodores finished with 1,528 votes, Nichols with 1,512. Ray Withy and incumbent Linda Pfeifer were the top two vote-getters, with 2,057 and 1,724 votes, respectively.

The vote on Measure E, the Mesa Park Firehouse community park $49 parcel tax annual increase, was even closer. The measure — which required two-thirds approval, or 66.67 percent of the vote, to pass — fell short with 539 yes votes, or 66.22 percent approval. Four more yes votes would have made the difference.